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Monday, January 21, 2013

Senator John Sherman to Major General William T. Sherman, July 18, 1863

MANSFIELD, OHIO, July
18, 1863.

My Dear Brother:

Isupposed
when Vicksburg fell that you would have a period of rest, and perhaps might
return to Ohio to find yourself popular and famous. But the fortune of war
carries you into new dangers and I hope new successes. We have been very
anxious for news from your movements, but as yet we have only had uncertain
reports, and can only live in the hope that you will whip Johnston and win new
laurels. I have just returned from Cincinnati, where I was during the whole of
Morgan’s raid. How completely the tone of the press has changed in regard to
you. Even the “Gazette,”1 which has been malignant to the last
degree, published quite a number of letters in which your share of the
movements about Vicksburg was highly praised. I notice, however, that the
editor has said nothing. All other papers, and indeed all officers and citizens
with whom I converse, gave you great credit. So that now in the Northern
States, and especially here in Ohio, your popularity is second only to that of
Grant. You need care but little for this, as you passed through a storm of
obloquy which would have submerged many an officer. Popular opinion is so changeable
that it is worthless. It is founded upon rumor, and is as explosive as gas.
Meade has had a foretaste of this. His drawn battle at Gettysburg relieved the
country from a great danger, and he was at once a hero; he was the coming man.
He has allowed Lee to escape him, and all his popular honors are lost.
McClellan has succeeded in establishing the position of a party leader, and now
enjoys the bad honor of being cheered by a New York mob of thieves and
scoundrels, while poor Hooker is dropped by all just when he thought he had Lee
in his power.

While the war goes on there is a danger looming up that
seems to me more ominous than any other. It is the Presidential election next
summer. We shall have a fierce canvass. . . . If the election cannot be held in
the Southern States, no one is likely to get a majority of the electoral
college. This must be, to secure an election by the people. All the States must
be counted, and under the Constitution the successful candidate must have a
majority of all the electoral votes. Can this be secured by any one man? If
not, the election then goes into the House, and who can tell the result. The
war has done a great deal to shake that implicit obedience to law which has
been the great conservative element, but in the struggle for so vast a prize
will it not be easy to clog the machinery for a legal election? — and then
civil war or anarchy is the certain result. These are only possible dangers,
but it is well to look them in the face. At present I do not stand very well
with my political associates, because I have openly differed with them on
important questions. But I am too well grounded in the principles of the
Republican party to be shaken in my faith. Indeed, nearly all the errors into
which the administration has fallen, have arisen from the advice of an old
school of politicians who never belonged to the Republican party.

Affectionately your
brother,

JOHN SHERMAN.

__________

1 Cincinnati “Gazette.”

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman
letters: correspondence between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891,
p. 206-8